The Malmillard Codex (8 page)

Still, Madryn must have a plan for him. Val
knew that must be so…no one took on the risks of traveling with
someone like him, not without some sort of pressing agenda.

Val shook his head at his whirling thoughts.
His only hope was that, whatever Madryn's plans for him, she would
not change them now. He knew he would not be able to stand it if
she left him here, alone. Oh, he could survive with no problem; he
could steal enough food and a horse to get out of the city, and
then become a mercenary to earn his bread. Living would be the
least of his worries.

But living without Madryn would be
impossible.

Val determined to ask her these and other
questions, this very night. He had to find out, had to stop living
with his heart in his throat, where it had taken up residence since
the day he'd met her. Tonight, he would find out his future.

Val had just reached this point in his
musings when they returned to the
Drunken Raven
.

"Innkeeper?" Madryn called as they entered
through the heavy street door that hung from rope hinges. Val
looked around. The taproom was filled with somber, silent women and
men, all gazing into brimming mugs, none of whom paid them the
slightest attention.

A curious incident in itself.

A massive woman with an uncanny resemblance
to her cousin the gatekeeper stuck her head up through a hole in
the floor, her mighty bulk nearly blocking this entrance to her
cellar. The ladder on which she balanced gave a protesting shriek
that shot across the quiet room like a moan from a damned soul.

"Milady? Sir?"

"Do you serve food in this place?"

"No, indeed, milady, but there is a good
eating place just a few paces down the street, run by my sister and
her boy."

"Damn," Madryn muttered under her breath.
"This entire village is one huge family."

"My sister is a famous cook, and she'll be
pleased to arrange a most delicious dinner for you and the
gentleman," continued the innkeeper. "Shall I send word to her to
have it ready, say, sundown?"

A silver coin winked into existence and was
gone almost as quickly, caught between two tubby fingers. Val
spared a passing thought to the abundance of silver. How much could
Madryn carry in that single saddlebag? How long until her supply
ran out?

Madryn turned to him. Her hooded eyes told
him nothing, but her voice was cold. "I'm going to the docks to see
about a ship. Will you make sure Daemon is taken care of for me?
I'll meet you at this eating place at sundown and we'll have
supper."

Val nodded, but she had already disappeared
without waiting for a reply.

"Would the gentleman care for a drop of
something wet?" asked their landlady, who had finally managed to
emerge from the depths of the cellar.

Val fingered the few coins that he had in
his belt pouch, remembering when Madryn had tossed them to him the
previous day. "For incidentals," she'd said, then gave him a
crooked smile. His heart had twisted within him at her tone, so
like that which one would use to an equal. At once he had been
filled with a desire that burnt into his vitals. Not just the
desire for her, though that was the greatest part of it; a desire
to be her equal.

But he wasn't. He never could be. And he
didn't even have the satisfaction granted to some, the remembrance
of being free. He had been born a slave.

"Why do you treat me this way?" Val had
snapped. The words appeared of their own volition; he could not
have dared to say them otherwise.

"What way is that, Val?" Madryn asked, her
lean brown fingers unconsciously turning another coin.

"You treat me…like a friend."

"Ah, I see…it's that dislike of the nobility
that eats at you? Am I not supposed to speak to you at all, then?
Idiot! We're on the run, or had you forgotten?" Sarcasm leaked from
her voice. "If I treat you like a slave, how far will we get?"

Val had nodded once, an unreasoning anger
roiling in his belly—not at her, but at her tone, at the impossible
situation. "Yes…but you surely don't have the need to treat me so
in private. Why do you do it?"

Madryn laughed, but this was not her usual
soft, sardonic chuckle; this was sharp and bitter, more pain than
pleasure. "I beg your pardon; if I had known it bothered you so, I
would never have dealt with you as an equal. I know how…irritating
it can be, being treated above your station," she said, and her
words were thick with hidden meaning. She turned and wandered
towards the single window of their room, which looked over the
water of the harbor. Her back was stiff and unrepentant.

Val followed as if drawn by some magic
force; he watched her as she peered through the slatted shutter. A
sea bird whistled outside, arguing with another over a piece of
rotten fish.

Val felt very much like that piece of
fish.

"But it's not," Val said at last. "You
don't."

Madryn turned and looked into his
pain-filled eyes. Her own softened. "Not perhaps the clearest of
statements—Did you ever have training as an oracle, by any
chance?—but I think I can decipher your meaning. It's not
irritating? I don't speak as if I'm far above your station?"

"No. Yes."

Madryn reached out one long finger and
wrapped it around a lock of Val's hair. No longer shorn to the
skin, it was beginning to curl over his broad forehead in thick
auburn ringlets. He had contemplated cutting it, but remembered
that lords and gentlemen cultivated their hair as they did their
bodies.

Madryn gave the lock a gentle tug. "You
remind me of someone, Val," she said as she twisted the hair over
her finger, staring at it instead of meeting his eyes. "More and
more each day…it's almost frightening how much. And you should have
realized by now that I do not share the common opinions of
my—class. So try to get over this feeling of inferiority, won't
you? Although, grant you, it's far more pleasing that Val's—the
first Val, you understand?"

"Was he arrogant and high-born?" Val asked,
trying to control the shaking in his voice.

"The most arrogant and the highest born,"
she agreed with another bitter laugh.

Were those tears in her eyes?

"There were times when I most willingly
could have slapped his arrogant, beautiful face. But of course, I
didn't dare."

"Why?" Val smiled, not believing that there
was anything this woman would not dare.

"Why? My dear Val, he'd have had me whipped
to within an inch of my life, of course."

Her words were a blow to Val's belly that
knocked all the air out of him. His view of the world gave a
sudden, unexpected lurch.

"Whipped you?" Even to his own ears, Val's
voice sounded strangled with disbelief.

"Of course," Madryn replied, releasing the
lock of hair as if it had grown hot under her fingers. "It's what
one does to one's slaves, is it not? Remember, Val. Slavery is not
always something that is done to you. Some of us, poor fools that
we are, seize the collar with sick joy and tighten it about our
throats with our own hands."

Before Val could think of a reply, Madryn
had turned and left the shabby room. She waited for him downstairs,
and without another word, they had gone out to seek his blade.

And now she had left him alone again.

***

The trip to Daemon's stable residence was
quickly accomplished. The huge horse was glad to see him, snuffling
and snorting as Val reached up to rub his arched neck. Val checked
to see that his water was fresh and his food plentiful before
leaving Daemon to the competent hands of the stable attendants.

Now, the day stretched before him, empty
until sundown. Val cast a quick look at the brassy sky. At least
three more hours until his supper with Madryn. The town beckoned;
he had never been alone, unattended, without a guard or an owner,
in any town. He wandered away from the harbor, his sword slapping
companionably against his thigh. It was a most enjoyable feeling,
and did some small part in lessening the tight pain in his
chest.

In the Street of the Courtesans, he garnered
a great deal of attention from the boys and girls offering their
bodies for rent. He eyed the merchandise spread out for display,
noting here a full bosom, there a lean flank, as he strolled down
the street, smiling at their calls. In his time as a gladiator, Val
had been used as breeding stock, producing with carefully chosen
females a series of sturdy children, none of which he had ever seen
or held. He wondered in passing what the parents of these young
ones felt at their profession; doubtless, they considered it just
another way of earning bread in a hard world.

Shaking his head, Val turned a corner and
escaped from the throng-filled street into a smaller, quieter side
passage. At once the noise level, until now pounding against his
head like thunder, lessened to a more manageable roar. Soon it was
almost silent as he walked deeper into and along a dim
alleyway.

At the far end, Val found his progress
halted. The end of the alley was closed off with bars as thick as
his wrist, flaking with rust and decades of collected grime. With a
sigh, he turned to retrace his steps.

A tiny wind whirled scraps of rubbish into a
funnel shape. A harsh rasping sound echoed in the stillness, like
some great beast breathing.

Val felt an icy sense of danger race down
his spine. He looked around, noticing for the first time that he
was alone, and with no idea of where he was, or who—or what—might
be sharing this filthy alley with him.

A high-pitched voice, like the plucking of
tightly stretched gut strings, whispered in his ear.

Valaren Starseeker
, it whined.

Val swallowed through a throat gone dry.
Surely, he imagined that eerie voice, those words? Or did he really
hear someone—something—called the name that he had
appropriated?

Valaren Starseeker
, whispered the
voice once more, the faintest bit louder this time, but no more
recognizably human.
Valaren Starseeker.

Val snatched his sword from its scabbard,
taking comfort from the sturdy hilt, the silver nails at first cold
against his palm, the warming to match the heat of his hand.

Another cold wind caressed his cheek, lifted
the straggling curls from his forehead.

Valaren Starseeker,
hissed the
whining voice.

Val looked about him. Dizzy, his head
whirled; his feet were so far away, and suddenly were not able to
support his weight. A smell rose about him, sharp and strange amid
the simmering reek of alley, a spicy smell, dazzling and
unknown.

Val watched in fatal fascination as the
rough cobbled floor of the alley rose up to slap full against his
face. He felt a trickle of blood begin to leak from his nose as his
mind floated away.

***

Another slap rocked Val's head backward.

But cobbles or eerie winds or magical voices
did not administer this particular slap. This one came from a most
mortal and human hand, delivered with the utmost in enthusiasm and
a certain glee.

Val opened bleared eyes and tried to settle
his vision as it bounced and ricocheted from succeeding slaps.
Before another could land, he lashed out with his own hand and
seized a scrawny wrist, encircled it with his strong fingers.

He squeezed.

A mouse-like squeak ripped from a
gap-toothed mouth. "Your pardon, sire," said a small boy, his
unwashed body nearly naked. "I was only trying to wake you, indeed
I was, sire my lord, afore the rats began to nibble on your
toes."

Val sat up. He was still in that same
alleyway littered with rubbish and thick with a rancid, musty
smell. But beneath that smell common to all alleys, there lingered
a sharper, stronger scent, bitter as blood, seductive as opium.

A dim fragment of memory twined tendrils
through his dizzy mind. A voice, a strange whispering voice…an
order, a command…

The memory was gone, blown away by the fresh
air of his returning senses, dissipating even as he tried to grasp
it. Gone. What had it been? What had it wanted of him? What…what
had it ordered him to do?

Val struggled to his feet, one hand reaching
out for purchase on the stone wall beside him. He saw with relief
that his other hand was still firm about the handle of his new
sword, and his dagger still rested securely in the top of his
boot.

The boy who had been slapping him sat back
on bony heels, his skinny body a collection of sticks covered in
rags.

"What did you see, boy?" Val grated, leaning
against the wall as a sudden dizziness threatened to drop him
again.

"Only you, sire, indeed, a lying here all
alone, with the rats beginning to gather," said the boy, casting a
nervous glance at Val's sword.

"Nothing else?"

"No, sire, nothing else indeed. Well,
barring a strange sound, like as it might have been a very big rat
a scuttling away. There be some fearful big rats near the harbor,
sire," concluded the boy, as if satisfied in his own mind what the
odd sound must have been.

But Val was not convinced that it had been a
rat, huge or otherwise. He jingled the coins in his belt pouch and
watched as the boy's face lit up.

"Indeed, sire, it was my pleasure to save
you, but if you was a'wanting to offer me a reward, I won't say
no," he said, a grin plastered across his dirty face.

Val dug out a small copper coin and tossed
it to the boy, then shook himself once and walked from the
alley.

The boy bit down with two of his remaining
teeth on the coin. It was enough to buy bread for the whole family,
he thought in satisfaction. Or enough to buy meat and ale for
one.

The boy scampered toward the ale shop at the
corner.

The sun was
casting out its last faint rays in a net of gold as Val approached
the cookshop where he was to meet Madryn. The crowds in the street
had lessened from earlier in the day. It was that time when
approaching nightfall had sent many of the weaker indoors, even as
the predators who thrived on darkness rose from sleep and began
their wanderings in the soon to be murky streets.